Contrary to popular belief, there is a lot of commonality between Jesus Christ and Karl Marx. Believe it or not, I even used to think they were somehow related, to be precise I thought they were cousins or something. This thought was not just a product of my mental malfunction or imagination gone overboard, but was born out of the similarities between these two great men. If my memory serves me well, I think they were both Jewish and had the usual story of ‘from rags to riches’ or in their case, fame. Secondly, they are the most controversial people you will ever come across because they are either misunderstood, misinterpreted, or over understood. Wars have been fought and are still being fought because of them or simply for what they said. But the third and most important commonality is that they wanted to change the world; for better or for worse that remains the bone of contention.
If I understood them very well, they wanted to introduce something called communism, therefore, they were communists. Apparently, this communism thing is all about sharing everything. It is against ownership of private property, everything equally belongs to everybody. I wholly concur and subscribe to the idea, except when it comes to women that is where I want it to be modified. As far as I am concerned I cannot willingly and knowingly share my gorgeous girlfriend with that aesthetically unappealing guy for the sake of equal opportunity.
But for some reason, Jesus dedicated much of his time advocating for this idea of equal sharing so much so that he sacrificed his life for it, an ultimate sign of true conviction. He just did not preach communism, but he practiced it – remember he multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish to feed multitudes of people. As if that was not enough, he went ahead and turned gallons of water into wine so that all people could drink and be merry. His actions and deeds touched everybody. Remember he clothed the poor, led the blind, and gave water to the thirsty, despite all the persecutions and abuse. This is why I still consider Jesus and Karl Marx my all time icons, real freedom fighters.
But not all is lost. Today there are some people who still follow the teachings of these two men, the people who are still clinging to the idea of sharing, who are still holding true to the spirit of communism. And these are none other than the guys who drink Chibuku. As a matter of fact, it is close to impossible to see a person drinking Chibuku alone. Chibuku is a communal drink. It is the true epitome of communism. A box of Chibuku will normally be shared by a dozen of guys over a light conversation ranging from politics to football. When it gets finished, another round will roll, with everybody having an equal opportunity to buy. Of course, fights do break up but in most cases differences are sorted out amicably. It is this spirit of Chibuku that has seen some of us able to pay for school fees, clothe and feed our children. It has seen many of us realize our dreams of becoming lawyers, teachers, and ministers.
The point is we should be considerate and rational on our approach to fight alcohol abuse rather than be consumed by our hate for the devil’s waters. I am not denying that alcohol abuse is a social problem, I am only contesting the premise of our case. That is, how did we come to conclude that indeed we have a problem of alcohol abuse in our country because as far as I am concerned it was purely perceptive rather than empirical. I do not recall any study conducted to verify this hypothesis, but instead we resorted to common sense and personal judgments which are normally biased and speculative.
I believe, we could have done a much better job in assessing the nature and extent of the ‘problem’ in order to synthesise proper mitigation strategies. The rob Peter to pay Paul approach we are using is unlikely to remedy the situation. Rather it is likely to mutate into a problem itself. The approach is hell-bent on vilifying and punishing the victim rather than helping him/her overcome the problem. Painting alcohol bad and portraying its drinkers as irresponsible people with no future will hardly yield any positive results for the anti-liquor campaign. Let us go back to the drawing board and come up with an inclusive and accommodative model in dealing with this issue.
More crucially let us discourage all forms of abuse including abuse of power.
